"The very high prices required to profit from mammoth projects planned to meet forecasted demand will kill the fossil fuel industry quickly," asserts Verleger.

He says the industry will have its own "Kodak moment," referring to the collapse of the photographic film industry, which ignored, until it was too late, the technological changes like digital photography and the I-phone.

Oil companies that expand into high-cost areas like Alaska are likely to find themselves with stranded costs. Verleger says the assumption is there will be a market for oil at $200 a gallon - but demand for it at that price will be minimal.

Instead, users of oil and products made from it like gasoline will cut back.

Combine these economic realities with the effect of government policies that encourage efficiency, Verleger believes, and the effort to control CO2 in the atmosphere won't be as daunting as some of the global-warming doom-sayers predict.

But what about all that coal being burned in China?

Verleger says pollution from coal-burning has become so horrific in China, its leaders will be forced to take dramatic action soon. He says the situation is not unlike that in London in the winter of 1952, when an unusually thick, persistent smog laced with sulfur dioxide and particulates from coal killed 12,000 people in just a few weeks.

"I think China will move much more rapidly away from coal and towards conservation and towards alternatives than any other country," he says.

Verleger also thinks oil prices will get so high, solar and wind energy will soon be able to compete on cost alone.